I see profiles of Jon Skeet, BalusC, Mysticial etc and realize that even if they were to go inactive, it'll take years to beat them in terms of total rep, because they'll hit the rep cap every single day, thanks to their popular old answers for years to come.

I do realize, the answers totally deserve the rep they get, they are brilliant! But they do have to stop generating rep at some point to be fair right?

This is the first time somebody has openly admitted to stalking me. Is that a good thing? :P
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MysticialNov 16 '12 at 6:21

3

The rep gain will stop and collapse once the upvote counter overflows ;-)
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JackNov 16 '12 at 6:51

@Cthulhu: You're jealous of a great answer? Why not just be happy that it's out there?
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David RobinsonNov 16 '12 at 7:03

5

No pitchfork or torch, but plain -1 because "take years to beat them in terms of total rep" is really not a reason to stop gaining rep. So some people will always be first. So what? What's so horrible about that? I'm happy for Jon and amazed at how much he invest and still investing.
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Shadow WizardNov 16 '12 at 7:05

So you suggest that once a year the user's reputation will be reset to 0? Will this satisfy your jealousy?
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Shadow WizardNov 16 '12 at 7:07

Maybe a different metric like "Rep this year" or "Rep this quarter" could be emphasised on user-profiles along with total rep being the way it is?
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Anirudh RamanathanNov 16 '12 at 7:19

5 Answers
5

But should we even care? Unless you're into the gaming aspect of it, or you're just really obsessed with big numbers (note that I shouldn't be the one talking :P) it really doesn't make a difference whether someone has 30k or 300k.

Both a 30k and a 300k user know their way around the site very well. Both are trusted. The only difference is that the 300k user has probably been around a lot longer or simply has a lot more time on his/her hands.

In any case, I find that rep is a pretty poor indicator of expertise past the basics.

Personally, I find it pointless to try to reach the top. The repcap makes it almost impossible since it blocks anyone from "jumping" to the top in a short amount of time.

@Cthulhu I believe Eric Lippert's vote/answer ratio is even higher along with a handful of low-volume users. That said, if you exclude my top 4 answers, my vote/answer ratio is about average for the tags that I'm in.
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MysticialNov 16 '12 at 7:42

No. These answers are letting the users hit the reputation cap every day because they are upvoted every day. In other words, those answers continue to be of great value to the community, and there's no reason they should stop getting benefits (in the form of reputation) from them.

I like the question, but I don't believe rep should have diminishing returns. The way I see it, the point of rep is not to make whoever earns it feel better. Instead, rep should be an indicator of the amount of good answers etc. that person has provided to the community. Placing diminishing returns makes no sense. If an increasing amount of people feel a given answer is valuable, then its impact should scale equally.

Keep in mind that rep points are just fancy unicorn magic bubbles with no real use, there is no point in farming it except for epeen. In fact, rep farming can induce worse answers/reviews and may even need to be stopped somehow. Nobody should be trying to 'get on top'.

Reps can be a function of time. New answers get 10 reps. Upvotes on Old answers can be awarded smaller reps depending on their age, eventually converging to 0.

In other words, those answers continue to be of great value to the
community, and there's no reason they should stop getting benefits (in
the form of reputation) from them

The answers are of great value, so they should keep registering UpVotes.

Questions that were answered in the initial days tend to benefit from the fact that they were "first in market" and have become cash-cows that CANNOT be replaced. A lot of these questions solved fundamental problems that a lot of people come across (and this will continue to happen in future). A lot of questions can be answered very well (or better) by new SOers but because they have already been answered, they can't be answered again. Doesn't this make it unfair?

SO is more fun when everyone gets a fair chance to gain reps - I know reps don't matter a lot to many, but some do find it fun to gain high reps!